Europe has no monopoly on democracy

José Manuel Barroso was not always the man at the head of a European Commission that can't get the financial crisis under control. In his youth, his native country of Portugal suffered under dictatorship. His political commitment is rooted in a genuine democratic conviction.When he declared at the G20 summit in Los Cabos that Europe needs no lessons in democracy from anybody, and certainly not from countries that are not democracies at all, this was not an expression of a random bad mood. What was at stake for him was something he believes in deeply.